Method and apparatus for providing electrical power to a broadband digital subscriber line access

ABSTRACT

Power is supplied to telecom equipment in DSLAM outdoor/remote cabinets with relatively short distances between the subscriber and the cabinet. All of the subscriber Customer Premises Equipment connected to the DSLAM each provide a portion of the required power to the remote cabinet via the telephone line connecting the DSLAM and the subscriber CPE. The CPE at the subscriber premises is already connected to power mains in the subscriber premises so, providing power, via the telephone line to the outdoor cabinet is relatively simple. The remote cabinet includes a circuit for receiving the power input from each subscriber and then distributing the power, required by the DSLAM load, equally among the subscribers.

REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.12/531,672, filed Feb. 24, 2010, which was a National Stage Entry ofPCT/IB2007/000675, filed Mar. 16, 2007, the disclosures of which areincorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to broadband services to subscribers. Moreparticularly, and not by way of limitation, the present invention isdirected to a system and method for providing power to a DigitalSubscriber Line Access Multiplexer that is installed in a remote cabinetremote from a Central Office (CO).

BACKGROUND

1. Prior Art and Problems

With the increasing need for telecom operators, to move their telephoneequipment closer to the subscribers, due to requirements for higherbandwidth on a subscriber's broadband line, the need for solutions toelectrical powering of new outdoor/remote cabinets are rising. Withtoday solutions these cabinets are either powered from mains on site orby remote powering from a CO.

The challenges of using the mains power in an outdoor cabinet is relatedto space and cost. In many countries the local power company requires a“power meter” to be connected to the outdoor cabinet to meter powerconsumption of the cabinet. The power meter as compared to the small,outdoor cabinet takes up space and increases the cost of installationand operation significantly.

By using power transmitted from the CO to the remote outdoor cabinet,unused cable pairs are required. And, in the future, the distancebetween the CO and the remote outdoor cabinet will be much longer thanthe outdoor cabinet to a subscriber's home (typical distance to home—500meters; to CO up to 5000 meters).

It would be advantageous to have a system and method for providing powerto the remote cabinet that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for providingpower to the outdoor cabinet from subscribers' home rather than the COor local power company. Existing telephone lines from each connectedsubscriber are used to transport power to the remote cabinet.

An add-on circuit will connect power from a subscriber's home back tothe outdoor broadband cabinet. Circuits in the outdoor cabinet uses thesubscriber provided power to distribute via the normal supply lines inthe cabinet to installed broadband equipment.

Thus, in one aspect, the present invention is directed to a method ofproviding power to a remote cabinet providing broadband service thatprovides telecom service to a subscriber's facility via wireline.Electrical power is connected from the subscriber's premises to thewireline service and converted from AC to DC power. The voltage isfurther regulated for transmission to the remote cabinet, where thebroadband service point regulates the received DC power to match therequirements of the broadband equipment in the cabinet.

In another aspect the present invention is directed to a system forproviding power to a remote cabinet with broadband equipment thatsupplies telecom service to a subscriber's premises via telephone wires(wireline). The CPE that is installed on the subscriber's premises ismodified to convert and regulate power for transmission to the broadbandequipment in the remote cabinet along the same telephone lines thatprovide the broadband service to the subscriber.

The power is received as DC power and then regulated to match therequirements of the equipment in the cabinet.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the following section, the invention will be described with referenceto exemplary embodiments illustrated in the figures, in which:

FIG. 1 depicts a high-level block diagram of portion of a network inwhich remote DSLAM is depicted serving four subscribers;

FIG. 2 illustrates a high-level block diagram of the remote cabinet inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 is a high-level of the CPE according to an embodiment of thepresent invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In this detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth inorder to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood by those skilled in the art, however,that the embodiments of the invention may be practiced without thesespecific details. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures,components and circuits have not been described in detail so as not toobscure the embodiments of the invention. It can be appreciated that thespecific structural and functional details disclosed herein may berepresentative and do not necessarily limit the scope of the invention.

An embodiment of the invention may include functionality that may beimplemented as software executed by a processor, hardware circuits orstructures, or a combination of both. The processor may be ageneral-purpose or dedicated processor, such as a processor from thefamily of processors made by Intel Corporation, Motorola Incorporated,Sun Microsystems Incorporated and others. The software may compriseprogramming logic, instructions or data to implement certainfunctionality for an embodiment of the invention. The software may bestored in a medium accessible by a machine or computer-readable medium,such as read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), magneticdisk (e.g., floppy disk and hard drive), optical disk (e.g., CD-ROM) orany other data storage medium. In one embodiment of the invention, themedia may store programming instructions in a compressed and/orencrypted format, as well as instructions that may have to be compiledor installed by an installer before being executed by the processor.Alternatively, an embodiment of the invention may be implemented asspecific hardware components that contain hard-wired logic forperforming the recited functionality, or by any combination ofprogrammed general-purpose computer components and custom hardwarecomponents.

Note that any reference in the specification to “one embodiment” or “anembodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, orcharacteristic described in connection with the embodiment is includedin at least one embodiment of the invention. The appearances of thephrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification arenot necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.

Referring now in detail to the drawings there is illustrated in FIG. 1 asystem suitable for practicing one embodiment of the invention. FIG. 1is a high-level block diagram of portion of a network in which remoteDSLAM is depicted serving four subscribers. The subscribers arerepresented by the CPEs 1-4. The DSLAM is not shown, but is installed inthe Cabinet. The Central Office (CO) is connected to a data network andthe Public Switched Telephone network and provides broadband service tothe CPEs via the DSLAM in the Cabinet.

FIG. 2 illustrates a high-level block diagram of the remote cabinet inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The CustomerPremises Equipment unit is receiving the VDSL2 service from the RemoteCabinet and the Remote Cabinet is housing a DSLAM. The DSLAM providesthe VDSL2 service to more than one subscriber, represented by the CPEunits designated CPE1, CPE2, CPE 3 and CPE4 as depicted in FIG. 1.

Power is provided to each CPE by each subscriber premises power main(e.g., 120 vac-240 vac). The power is converted and transmitted to PowerUnit and the DSLAM in the Remote Cabinet. The voltage inserted into thetelephone line (wireline) at the CPE is shown here as −60 vDC. Thevoltage supplied by the Power Unit is −48 v and a portion of therequired power is received from each of the CPEs served by the DSLAM inthe Remote Cabinet. The power unit present in the Remote Cabinetdetermines the load represented by the DSLAM and draws some power fromeach CPE according to the number of CPEs able to provide power. Thepower unit strives to divide the power requirement evenly over eachsupplying CPE.

FIG. 3 is a high-level block diagram of the CPE according to anembodiment of the present invention. The CPE is a modified traditionalCPE wherein a connection is provided that accepts the premises power,e.g., 110 vac to 240 vac in order to supply power to the DSLAM.

The premises power is converted from AC to DC and then supplied to theDC/DC power supply which regulates the voltage. The regulated DC voltageis then inserted into the incoming telephone line, or wireline, fortransmission to the power unit in the Remote Cabinet. The power unitwill regulate the amount of power drawn from the subscriber's CPEaccording to the number of connected CPEs.

By introducing power from the home, power can be supplied to telecomequipment in outdoor/remote cabinets with relatively short distancesbetween the subscriber and the cabinet. All of the subscriber CPE'sconnected to the DSLAM will provide a portion of the required power tothe remote cabinet. The CPE at the subscriber premises is alreadyconnected to the power mains in the subscriber premises so, providingpower, via the telephone line to the outdoor cabinet is relativelysimple. The remote cabinet includes a circuit for receiving the powerinput from each subscriber and then distributing the power, required bythe DSLAM load, equally among the subscribers.

A CPE capable of supplying a proper voltage to the DSLAM, e.g., −60 v DCis installed at the subscriber premises. Power inserted on to theexisting telephone line does not affect the phone line or a broadbandconnection. The broadband services provided may include ADSL, VDSL2,Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) and ISDN Digital SubscriberLine (IDSL), and Symmetric High-speed Digital Subscriber Line (SHDSL).To prevent a total loss of power if all CPE's were switched off, thepower missing from the CPEs could be supplemented with other powersources like solar, battery and remote power—to secure stand byoperation.

As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, the innovativeconcepts described in the present application can be modified and variedover a wide range of applications. Accordingly, the scope of patentedsubject matter should not be limited to any of the specific exemplaryteachings discussed above, but is instead defined by the followingclaims.

1. A method performed by a remote device for providing power to theremote device connected to a network, the method comprising: providingtelecom service from the remote device to a plurality of subscriber'spremises via a respective wireline, wherein each of the plurality ofsubscriber's premises is configured to connect electrical power from apower circuit in each of the plurality of subscriber's premises to therespective wireline, wherein the electrical power is converted from ACpower to DC power and the DC power is a regulated DC power; regulatingan amount of power drawn from a subscriber's customer premises equipmentbased on a number of connected subscriber's customer premises equipment;and receiving the regulated DC power via the respective wireline,wherein the remote device includes DC voltage regulation circuits tomatch electrical power requirements for the remote device.
 2. The methodof claim 1, wherein the remote device receives power from other sources.3. The method of claim 1, wherein the telecom service is one of:Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), Symmetric Digital SubscriberLine (SDSL), Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line 2 (VDSL2) ISDNDigital Subscriber Line (IDSL), and Symmetric High-speed DigitalSubscriber Line (SHDSL).
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprisingdrawing an even amount of power from each of the subscriber's customerpremises equipment.
 5. A remote device configured to provide power tothe remote device when connected to a network, the remote devicecomprising: a providing circuit for providing telecom service to aplurality of subscriber's premises via a respective wireline; and aregulating circuit configured to regulate an amount of power drawn froma subscriber's customer premises equipment based on a number ofconnected subscriber's customer premises equipment, and to receive aregulated DC power from each wireline to match electrical powerrequirements of the remote device.
 6. The remote device of claim 5,wherein the remote device receives power from other sources.
 7. Theremote device of claim 5, wherein the telecom service is one of:Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), Symmetric Digital SubscriberLine (SDSL), Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line 2 (VDSL2) ISDNDigital Subscriber Line (IDSL), and Symmetric High-speed DigitalSubscriber Line (SHDSL).
 8. The remote device of claim 5, wherein thepower regulation means regulates an even amount of power drawn from eachof the subscriber's customer premises equipment.
 9. A method in asubscriber's customer premises equipment for providing power to a remotedevice connected to a network, the method comprising receiving a telecomservice from the remote device via a wireline, wherein the subscriber'scustomer premises equipment is configured to connect electrical powerfrom a power circuit to the wireline, wherein the electrical power isconverted from AC power to DC power and the DC power is a regulated DCpower; and transmitting an amount of the regulated DC power to theremote device via the wireline, which amount of power drawn from thesubscriber's customer premises equipment is based on a number ofconnected subscriber's customer premises equipment to the remote deviceto match electrical power requirements of the remote device.
 10. Asubscriber's customer premises equipment for providing power to a remotedevice connected to a network, the subscriber's customer premisesequipment comprising: a receiver configured to receive a telecom servicefrom the remote device via a wireline; a connecting circuit configuredto connect electrical power from a power circuit to the wireline,wherein the electrical power is converted from AC power to DC power andthe DC power is a regulated DC power; and a transmitting circuitconfigured to transmit an amount of the regulated DC power to the remotedevice via the wireline, which amount of power drawn from thesubscriber's customer premises equipment is based on a number ofconnected subscriber's customer premises equipment to the remote deviceto match electrical power requirements of the remote device.